Holy .... NGC just took PCGS behind the woodshed!

2010 or 2011. I don't remember the exact year. At least three including NCS. One was hired back when the economy turned around. Then they went on a hiring spree. I wrote several months ago that the last time I dropped something off, NGC had paved the grass behind the building to add parking. I'll bet at least three hundred people work there now. I didn't see an empty space except for a few by the visitor's entrance.

 

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Too late on this one - otherwise why would the saying, "Buy the coin, not the holder" be something that can be seen so prominently on forums?

LOL! Missed it - Have to remember to open another business and charge for the "NEW! IMPROVED! Tamper Proof! EPQ Sticker Only 10.00 (Plus any Priceless heirloom) Per Submitted Slab. Flat rate mailing cost of 9.99 (per coin)"

Nope, I was the schoolboy-aged helper for the owner.
My costs were the same as any customers. He kept the dealer prices to himself (although I did sometimes know what he was paying people when they brought something in for sale).

Although I have looked, I have never found an explanation as to why it did not work. Again, I worked with a machine that could have performed the job - it did this very thing to a higher degree. It scanned and evaluated molded parts according to easily programmed parameters down to thousandths of an inch. You walked the machine through the first part - visually as the part was magnified and you could see it on a screen. You located a position on the part with a mouse click, and through menus, told the machine what to check/measurements to take. After the initial setup, you could save the configuration the machine could access that program to re-use for those identical parts. After this, you would tell the computer which program to use, put the part onto the stage, the machine oriented its scanning according to how it "found" the part positioned. After measuring everything, a report was generated onscreen (which could be viewed by having the machine review the measuring onscreen) where there were problems (if any). This included tolerances of surface anomalies (if found).

In fact, if anything, that scanner was more than capable and would have had to have been scaled back to allow much higher tolerances. The 10X loupes TPGs use for coins come nowhere close to this level of inspection.

Since I was only working temp at the time, I was at this QC department for only a month or so. It was at a plastic injection molding plant (one of quite a few). I wish I could remember the name of the machine/company!


The TPGS said they spent hundreds of thousands on developing the tech when it was already in use. Which is why, at the time,
I always wondered why coins were not computer graded anyway. Remember this was in the days of Windows 95!

 

It didn't work because the TPGs don't grade coins--they price them. And eye appeal can't be programed into a machine.

 

That's an eloquent way to put it.

 

and it's more true than most people would like to think, including the TPGs.

 

Is anyone seeing a decline in PCGS and NGC slabbed coins because of this? I've been looking at a few coins on eBay and it seems that the prices have declined over the past few weeks. Especially with some of the modern MS/PF 70 graded coins.

 

@Cascade ; @Insider ; @Conder101 ; @C-B-D ; and others...

In Scott Traver's book The Coin Collector's Survival Guide, some information is given as to the private ownership of NGC. Heritage does not directly (as a company) own stock in NGC. However, Jim Halperin and Steve Ivy (co-chairmen of Heritage Auctions) do own around 25% (plus or minus) of non-voting stock in NGC. It has varied between 24% and 30% over the past 10 years. Mark Salzberg owns more than 50% of NGC stock, and his shares have voting rights. Thus, Mark is majority owner and can make any final decision. In April 2015, the last update in Traver's book, Jim Halperin mentioned that he and Ivy's stock percentage was around 27% (still non-voting), and that it had decreased from its 30% of a few years earlier because "well deserved employee stock options had diluted his and Ivy's shares".

Halperin and Ivy have always owned non-voting stock in NGC, and have consistently maintained transparency (voluntary disclosure) to avoid any appearance of conflicts of interest between Heritage and NGC.

 

How much more?

 

It's a private company, so it doesn't say. It just says he owns more than 50%. His shares are "voting rights" shares, so if he owns more than 50% of the company stock, and all of his shares are voting rights shares -- he owns a significant amount of the voting rights shares.

That being said, I seriously doubt he wrote this letter in a vacuum and posted it without running it by NGC stakeholders.

 

No personal gain to be had? Or, have we all 'been had'.........

 

I would have to agree. Surely he would have to have the acumen and/or perception to know what a claim such as this would have on the hobby and on holders of PCGS and NGC slabbed coins esp.

 

Thank you for that; it's been a longstanding question in my mind.

I don't see a thing about this whole affair impacting Heritage's prerogatives in the slightest. They're losing money from the downturn in PCGS pricing, since their income is directly proportional to sale prices.

 

Well done, sir!

 

Now THAT makes sense to me...very logical. You are the first to ever mention this to me.

I think maybe both methods could be implemented though. I would like to see a TPG have to describe why they give a specific grade. I would like to see some way in which an MS69 vs an MS70 is awarded other than how the grader's tuna sandwich with mustard was sitting with them.

 

@Paul M. found this across the street detailing how many times a coin get cracked, how many of the same can you count? http://www.pcgscoinfacts.com/CoinImages.aspx?s=2737

 

I thought graders use 5x loupes to grade. At least this is what I hear.

 

I count 18 times. At least PCGS was consistent!

 

I heard differently...Some do, some don't. Depends on the coin size, its value, and the experience of the grader.

 

Good God...

 

You should start your own thread on this.